5 'Lemonade Lessons' From 10-Year-Old Entrepreneur Vivienne Harr

Last week, 10-year-old entrepreneur Vivienne Harr stole the show
at the National Small
Business Week kickoff event at Twitter's San Francisco
headquarters. Harr, founder of the charitable lemonade company
Make A Stand, shared her
"lemonade lessons" with the crowd of small-business owners and
advocates.

Harr was only 8 when she saw photographer Lisa Kristine's
image of two young Nepalese brothers carrying heavy stones
down a mountain. When she learned that these boys were slaves,
she immediately decided that she wanted to end child slavery. So
in May of 2012, she did what many kids do, and set up a lemonade
stand near her home in Fairfax, California, except the money she
earned didn't go towards candy and toys. She charged "Whatever's
in your heart" and gave all proceeds to charities fighting for
her cause.

As word got out about her mission, Harr continued to sit at her
increasingly popular lemonade stand every day, and in December,
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg invited her to sell her
lemonade in Times Square. By the end of the day, she had raised
$101,320.

She told her parents that she wasn't going to stop until child
slavery no longer existed, and they decided to help her turn her
cause into a real company called Make A Stand. Five percent of
profits from every professionally produced bottle of fair-trade,
organic "lemon-aid" goes toward the
company's foundation, which works towards Harr's goal by
funding organizations like Free The Slaves and UNICEF. The
company says its foundation has raised over $25,000, and
UPS recently announced it would donate $1 for every bottle
sold through December, up to $10,000.

In January, Harr's father Eric quit his job to dedicate
himself to her goal full-time,and he's now in talks
with two major grocery chains for distribution rights.

We caught up with Harr to find out how she successfully started a
business and rallied people around her cause (with a little help
from her parents). She shares some of her "lemonade lessons" for
entrepreneurs and small-business owners below.

1. "Thinking like a kid" can help you overcome setbacks.

"Kids don't see a lot of the obstacles in the world," Harr says.
She thinks that more adults could benefit from the idealistic
optimism that comes with being a child. Failure has never once
crossed her mind as she and her family worked to turn a lemonade
stand into a real company. And her dad said it's her unwavering
optimism that inspired him to leave his job and work towards
realizing her vision.

2. Social media provides a great way to build trust with your
customers.

Leave it a 10-year-old to harness the power of social-media
marketing. Harr's successful outreach to celebrities and
activists on Twitter introduced her to a national audience. She
says that social media provides her and her parents with a tool
to reach out to customers, and that these interactions build
trust because they show that her enthusiasm for the movement is
genuine. When you've personally convinced people to support your
company, they become brand ambassadors.

Twitter executives asked Harr to ring the ceremonial
bell at its IPO last November.Reuters/Lucas Jackson

3. If you grow too fast, you can forget why you started.

Harr wants her business to become successful, but she doesn't
want to let too many people join and turn it into just another
big company.

She wants to keep her team small enough so that she still has
influence over the overall direction of the company. She says
every owner has a responsibility to his or her company to "keep
it pure."

4. Giving back is a win-win situation.

Harr doesn't expect every business owner to dedicate so
much of their business to charity the way she does, but
she thinks that it's a great idea to give your company some
charitable aspect. There's the good you're doing, and in
practical terms, "it makes more people want your product," she
says.

She thinks that the charitable business model compels more people
to give to charities, and since buying these products makes
people feel good, sustains itself.

5. You have a shot at success if you "start with your heart."

As a final piece of advice, Harr says that the only way
entrepreneurs have a chance of being successful is if they start
a business because they're following their passion.

She believes so strongly in Make
A Stand that she wants to make her foundation her life's
work. And she thinks she'll get her first major goal completed in
just a couple decades. "I plan on ending child slavery by the
time I'm 30," she says, "and then I'll find another cause."